Isabelle Adjani plays the main role as Anna for which she was awarded Best Actress award in Cannes, yet the film itself ended up as a video nasty. A deep and harrowing portrait of psychological disintegration, Adjani's performance requires her to be in a state of escalating hysteria throughout the film. Anna has left her husband Mark (Sam Neill) and she is acting strangely, picking up a lover called Heinrich and neglecting her son. Mark and Anna are going through the break up from hell. Anna grows ever more hysterical, argues a lot with Mark, and then attempts to cut her throat with a carving knife. Anna is living in an apartment with a hideous creature who has sex with her. She has an absolutely dreadful miscarriage and starts killing people, whose body parts she stores in the fridge. A whole load of hysteria goes on and Mark and Anna kill themselves. It is extremely hard to write a synopsis of the action in Possession because there are so many plot threads, themes and ideas going on. For the purposes of this article, it is necessary to focus on Isabelle Adjani's portrayal of madness, which some viewers hate, as they think it is over the top, and some viewers think is masterful. Director Zulawski demanded a brilliant high octane performance from Adjani as Anna. Prepare to sit stupefied in front of the film at Anna's antics, and also Mark's dramatics which lead to him becoming virtually as mad as Anna by the end of the film.
My first film watched was Carrie aged 2 on my dad's knee. Educated at The University of St Andrews and Trinity College Dublin. Fan of Arthouse, Exploitation, Horror, Euro Trash, Giallo, New French Extremism. Weaned at the bosom of a Russ Meyer starlet. The bleaker, artier or sleazier the better!
